DailyOM Library : Echo Bodine : What Happens When We Die: A Psychic's Exploration of Death, Heaven, and the Soul's Journey After Death

What Happens When We Die: A Psychic's Exploration of Death, Heaven, and the Soul's Journey After Deathby Echo BodinePosted by: DailyOM

With her signature wit and fearlessness, beloved psychic and healer Echo Bodine offers answers to life’s biggest questions: Is there a heaven? Are there people who have been there and come back? Do we have souls? Can we communicate with deceased loved ones?

Based on Echo’s personal experience of observing the souls of people nearing death and communicating with souls who have died, this comforting book shines light on the dying process and the afterlife. Her clear and fascinating stories demystify this universal experience and demonstrate that death is nothing to fear. You’ll learn about:

* the stages the body goes through preceding death
* the white light and the tunnel that lead to the other side
* how to make sense of the death of children
* what happens to those who commit suicide
* the nature of heaven

Echo offers practical tools for being with dying loved ones (including what not to do), for grieving (through the poignant experience of her mother’s passing as Echo was writing this book), and for cultivating clear communication with the deceased. Learning what happens when we die can be inspiring, reassuring, and profoundly life changing.

EXCERPT

Getting Death Out in the Open and Celebrating Life

When a loved one passes, we often wish we had asked more questions or had certain conversations with them. What were they like as a kid? What did they love (or hate) about their job? What brought them the most joy? Did they have a favorite book, poem, or piece of music?

Similarly, I’ve noticed that souls on the other side often wish they had made themselves better understood to their loved ones while they were alive. And those facing a final illness, or simply advanced age, often find it helpful to disburden themselves before they pass on — to explain to those who will outlive them what they believe, what they care most about, why they did this rather than that, and so on. In this chapter, I’ll give you a few suggestions for communication and creative expression during the dying process to help the dying as well as those who will be left behind.

Let Them Talk

I’ve sat with families who were all together because one of their members was dying, and yet no one talked about it. Death is often the elephant in the room that everyone pretends isn’t there. This must change, because what ends up happening is that the person who’s dying feels very alone in this important time of their life, unable to communicate to their loved ones about what they’re going through. We need to change that, for their sake and for ours.

We need to encourage the dying person to talk about what this feels like for them. It may seem awkward at first to get the conversation going, but once they know people are interested in what they’re going through, they usually have a lot to say. Their life is coming to an end, and at this time, many people take an inventory of their life. They have memories they want to share, resentments they may be holding on to, happy stories, sad stories, boring stories, exciting stories. They may want to share it all, and they need — and deserve — someone to listen to them.

In my practice as a healer, I work with many clients who know they’re dying. Some of them deal with it straight-on by openly sharing their thoughts, feelings, hopes, and dreams, getting their affairs in order, tying up loose ends, and so on. Instead of pretending it’s not happening, they embrace this passage of their life. They cherish each day that they have and live it to the fullest. Sure, some clients come for healings hoping to be healed, but others come not to live longer but to feel better and have more energy while they’re here. For example, when one of my clients was in her dying process, she invited me over for lunch and showed me all kinds of pictures of herself when she was younger. She reminisced about the men she had loved, the places she had visited, the schools she had attended, and her accomplishments other than raising her children. She had always talked about her children’s lives but rarely talked about her own experiences, so it was wonderful to see her open up the way she did.

Unfortunately, most of us don’t have this kind of attitude when we find out we’re dying. The majority of dying clients I work with are frightened, depressed, and anxious about what’s ahead. They go through their dying process in a daze. They don’t want to talk about their feelings of anger, fear, or sadness and try to avoid feeling anything. They come for healing for a multitude of reasons other than their actual illness — depression, anxiety, alcoholism, insomnia. These people usually need a bit of coaxing to get them to talk. When I asked him to tell me about his life, one male client said there wasn’t anything to talk about, but once I asked specific questions — about his childhood, his teen years, his time in the military, how he met his wife, what it was like to become a father, what he did before retirement — he had a whole bucket’s worth of stories to tell me. It was fun to watch him get so animated about his life. I could see sadness in him at times but pure joy at other times.

The pre–Baby Boomer generation feels particularly uncomfortable talking about themselves. Many feel it’s selfish, so they need a bit of coaxing and reassurance that you’d love to hear about their life. Thinking that this might be the last time you will hear their voice or the wisdom they have to pass on to you will help you get over your own reluctance to face their impending death.

I’ve been present in many situations where the dying person starts randomly talking about ten different subjects at the same time, jumping from memory to memory, feeling to feeling. All of that is great. It’s how their mind is working and how they are able to communicate. Some of it may make you uncomfortable, but remember that this is their turn to say it all, so sit on your discomfort and let them get it out.

I was sitting and chitchatting with a dying woman and her two daughters, when the mother suddenly began making amends to her older daughter for disliking her when she was a child. The daughter had never heard her mother talk like this before, so of course she was quite surprised at the words coming out. The dying woman went on to say that she got pregnant at an early age and had to marry the father, who she wasn’t in love with, and felt that this daughter had ruined her life. It was interesting, to say the least, to watch the dynamics play out between the three of them. The mother felt relieved to have said all of it, the older daughter was stunned, and the younger daughter kept trying to change the subject and lighten up the conversation because she was uncomfortable with the whole dialogue. Even in a case this extreme, I think the dying person’s disburdening is more important than our discomfort. And I suspect that though the elder daughter was sad to hear what her mother had to say, it also probably explained a great deal about their relationship over the years — and it surely helped that relationship grow warmer in the time they had left together.